My guess is those who responded may not understand much about the Hegel H90 or how I had it setup for testing. If after I explain this you still think all audio gear sounds the same then we must have different ears.
Who said "....................all audio gear sounds the same....................", and I mean within this thread ? Please quote, as I really want to respond to such a post, or posts.
Setup #1
The Hegel H90 is an integrated amp. It has a DAC with USB interface, preamp, streamer and obviously an amp section. These sections all work together in a single case. In my test, I used the USB DAC of the Hegel H90 to interface with Audirvana on the MBP.
Setup #2
The Denon 4700 is an AVR that most are familiar with. It does not offer a USB input so the UPnP DLNA interface was used with the 4700 via the same Audirvana software on the MBP.
I said I wasn't going to repeat my previous comments, but the discussion is getting convoluted so for the benefits of the new participants I would do so when I feel necessary.
First of all, I don't know what MBP is, please clarify. Secondly, was the Denon in pure direct mode, no bass management and speakers set to large?
It is obviously important to compare the two without any signal processing involved other than DA conversion but regardless, clearly you were using two different set up, one via USB DAC input that is the best possible way for the Hegel to sound its theoretical best, whereas the Denon was via Audirvana/UUPnP DLNA so that is not an apple to apple comparison I mentioned before.
If you guys believe every integrated amp with internal USB DACs sound the same then probably no reason to try to determine which section of the H90 is causing the enhanced benefit. In that case, we have to disagree.
Good thing you included the "If", so I guess there is no disagreement on this one. Whether two set up will sound the same or not always depends on many things. In your setups, they are quite different, so of course they could sound different.
I have heard several different receivers, DACs and integrated amps that don't sound the same.
Given the example setups you described, I can imagine the reasons.
If everything not sounding the same somehow takes this thread off the guard rails then I am laughingly amused.
Again, "if" is the key word.
By the way, to the new/recent participants, below is a link to the post that prompted my many of my comments/reactions:
I can see your point because the Marantz AV7700 series didn't measure as well as the AV8800 series. So if I were buying a DM Pre-pro, it would be the AV8800 series, not AV7700 series. So what if it were the $4500 Marantz AV8805 vs $5500 Denon a110? :D BTW, in general, I would also buy the...
forums.audioholics.com
I do have a few questions for VPMS:
Q.1
You asked:
"So are you saying if I play the Denon CD player thru the Hegel H90 to BMR and compare that to Denon CD player to 4700 to BMR the difference will not show up? "
Have you tried that, using analog inputs for both, with no dsp, no REQ, and pure direct on the Denon, speakers set to large, no bass management, no subwoofer, just the BMR?
Q.2
In post#1089, you said:
"There are lots of characteristics that can impact the listening experience besides noise/sound. With most of today's audiophile gear meeting or beating acceptable noise/distortion levels
it's important to focus on the elephant in the room - sound quality. "
So I am curious to know aside from distortions including THD, IMD, XD, Frequency, linearity, and other metrics such as SNR, DR, what else determine "sound quality".
Q.3
Hegel claimed their designs were for minimizing distortions, citing "less than 0.01%". On their website, they emphasized the importance of low distortions multiple times, and also high damping factor. Do you believe their amps sound good because of the low distortions and high damping factor, or there are something else?
Q.4
As you know, I think you heard the difference because you use two different setup, once via USB DAC while the other was streaming and for the streaming setup I don't know if you were, or even could even using the same bit rate and bit depth, sampling frequency, and sound format. You also did not mention if any dsps, REQ and bass managements were involved. That's aside from the subjective factors such as you were already anticipating the benefits of what Hegel has been propagating on their websites about their SoundEngine that ensures what they considered low distortions.
But why do you think when I compared a Denon 3400 with my Cambridge audio preamp paired with either my Halo A21 or my Bryston 4B SST using several external DAC (including Oppo's Sonica USB DAC), using analog inputs and pure direct mode, no dsp, no REQ, speaker large, and I heard little difference? Note: I don't think I have trouble hear differences between any of my speakers, and I could hear differences between levels of 1 dB, and/or EQ of a couple dB for sure as that is easy to prove too.
Lastly, I think I mentioned before that I was impressed with the H90 too, it did compare well with Hegel's much more powerful amps such as the H30, but to me they were just being transparent as other amps in the demo room, nothing special or different about the "sound quality". I have no doubt their amps were design/built to be transparent, just get out the way and let the music play kind of amps, but so is the 4700. Wouldn't it be great if a few of us could get together one day and set up our own mutually agreed AB comparison with bias removed? It would be more entertaining than betting on horses.
